Tribunal rules in favour of releasing PACE trial data

August 17, 2016

A tribunal has ruled that anonymised data from the PACE trial should be released after an appeal was lodged against a prior ruling.

The ruling orders Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) to release anonymised data to Mr. Alem Matthees, a member of the public, who requested it using the Freedom of Information Act back in 2014 so that he could analyse the data himself. When QMUL refused to release the data, Mr Matthees complained to the Information Commissioner (IC) who ordered that the information be disclosed in October 2015. QMUL appealed against the IC’s decision, leading to a three day hearing that took place in London back in April.

Several M.E. charities, including Action for M.E., supported the release of the data and thousands of signatures were added to an open letter calling for it earlier this year.

Update Monday 5 September

The full judgement can be read on the Information Tribunal website, although it is currently unavailable. We understand that some of the wording in the document is being revised by the tribunal judge, after which the ruling will be uploaded to the website.